VÁCLAV NEUMANN: Lucerne Festival = DVORAK: Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88; The Wood Dove, Op. 110; SMETANA: Prelude to the opera Libuse – Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vaclav Neumann – Audite 97.832 (64:00) (9/24) [Distr. by Naxos] ****:
Though I have reviewed prior releases of performances by Czech conductor Václav Neumann (1920-1995), specifically from the Praga label, the opportunity to audition his previously unreleased work, 1984 and 1988, in Lucerne while on tour with his Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, came as one I relished. Neumann had served as a co-founder of the Smetana Quartet, playing violin and viola alternately. He debuted in conducting in 1948, leading the Czech Philharmonic; this, the same year Rafael Kubelik departed from the Soviet-ruled country in defiance of its foreign dictatorship.
Neumann took directorship of the Symphony Orchestra in Brno in 1954, then he moved in 1956 to the Komische Oper in Berlin. After a tenure of eight years, he again transplanted to Leipzig, to lead the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Leipzig Opera. Neumann’s decision to leave the GDR run Leipzig organizations involved resentments on both sides of the political equation. His easy transitions from the orchestra to the theater made him eligible to assume the Principal Conductor appointment to succeed Karel Ancerl at the Czech Philharmonic in 1968, a post Neumann held until 1990; then, a brief hiatus and resumption of activities 1992-1993. Between 1969 and 1990 Neumann took his CPO to the Lucerne Festival six times, in nine programs that included Janacek, Martinu, and Mahler.
The Audite collection opens with a rousing performance of Dvorak’s 1889 Eighth Symphony from 26 March 1988, in which, for the Allegro con brio, the rich timbres of strings, winds, and brass maintain a high alertness, the flute and assisting strings in brilliant tension. In its more transparent passages, the texture assumes the character of a country serenade, then explodes into a pantheistic panoply of resonant power. Comparisons with the long-established hegemony in this music by master conductor Vaclav Talich (1883-1961) become inevitable. The darker energies in this principally rustic music receive equal attention, the sense of trouble in Paradise, martial impulses that intrude on the Natural urge to express unbounded bliss.
The second movement, Adagio, extends the bucolic euphoria into a semi-dream state. Again, Neumann does not downplay the occasional, dark intrusion of menace, but the course of the music follows a melodic curve that might have taken its inspiration from meditations along Smetana’s Vltava. The music’s serenade texture accumulates power from layered harmonies, the brass and timpani ascendant, in the manner of a blazing chorale. The dark turn late in the movement possesses a Wagnerian tension, and the mixture might anticipate moments in Sibelius or Nielsen. The clash subsides into three punctuated chords that invoke once more the pantheistic dream and flow of Paradise Regained. The third movement Allegretto grazioso, a sensuous waltz, reveals Neumann’s careful attention to dance rhythms. Pliant and nuanced, the Czech strings, timpani, and winds converge to weave a seductive tapestry in luscious sonorities. Neumann keeps the pulse moving without exaggerated sentimentality, allowing Dvorak’s melos a natural fount in the CPO. The CPO trumpets invoke a potent fanfare for the last movement, Allegro ma non troppo, a theme and variations that exudes pomp, militant resolve, and whistling intensity. The competing cross rhythms somehow converge to form a plastic sense of resolution, returning in the recapitulation to the heavenly march whose Bohemian ethos seems only one step removed from Mahler’s invocations to Nature. Tiny luftpausen infiltrate the melodic line, moving to another woodwind serenade episode, held in one last readiness to exult in an epic, Slavonic Dance peroration, the exultant joy of life.
The 1889 tone-poem The Wood Dove shares with three other such symphonic works inspiration from poet Karol Jaromir Erben’s Bouquet of Poems, folk dramas that compete with the Brothers Grimm for rustic, gothic romance. Both Vaclav Talich and Fritz Lehmann documented their affection for The Wood Dove’s odyssey of murder and fatal repentance in celebrated recordings. Neumann’s live performance dates from 25 August 1984. The funeral march becomes inundated by the wavering figures of the widow’s false tears, her grief a mask for her infatuation with her new lover. The titular bird, however, sings of her underlying guilt, eventually driving her to suicidal madness.
Dvorak creates an arch-like progress that has debts both to Smetana and Liszt, with his own canny sense of orchestral colors. Neumann takes a more literalist approach to the score than Talich, driving the martial and pantheistic forces in direct collision. A kind of gypsy texture invites its own sense of cosmic justice, Dvorak’s musical equivalent to admonitions from Maria Ouspenskaya. The wonderful waltz theme, Allegretto grazioso, however, won the hearts of even Dvorak’s harsh critics, while Janacek and Mahler had delighted in conducting the score. In his final appearance before an orchestra, Dvorak led this brazenly variegated piece as part of his program.
The 1881 the “festive opera” Libuse of Smetana addressed the Czech, national idea of the Bohemian matriarch who opposes the foreign power emanating from Vienna. The opening trumpet fanfares of the Prelude invoke the call to Czech moral independence and prideful resolve against tyranny. This performance, from 26 August 1984, shimmers with a strong leaning to lyricism and transparent, color vitality. A contemporary critic of the concert remarked on Neumann’s interest, focused on “inner truthfulness” rather than “external effect.” Built into the theme itself resounds the “fate” rhythm from Beethoven, woven into an otherwise somber lyricism close to the melos of Richard Wagner.
Audite preserves no sound of audience response to the three offerings from Neumann and his Czech Philharmonic, so we must imagine or realize our heated enthusiasm ourselves.
—Gary Lemco
